


Girl from Ipanema

by tumbleweed (zel), zel



Category: Fallout - Fandom, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Caesar's Legion, F/M, Fallout Lore, Frumentarii, Sinatra
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 01:22:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zel/pseuds/tumbleweed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zel/pseuds/zel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Believing herself to be an NCR informant, Martina enjoys a liaison with her dashing captain at a snazzy hotel.  Picus learns of a plot that will change the future of New Vegas, and the frumentarii gather to plan the invasion. This story takes place after the Battle of the Dam but before Benny buries a courier in Goodsprings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girl from Ipanema

Long minutes in the blindfold sharpened his sense of hearing. He focused in on the rustling and the whisper of fabric. Years ago when he emerged the sole survivor of the Ritual, he could have never envisioned this, that he would be here like this, that this was his mission. Perhaps if the other candidates knew what awaited them, they would have fought harder to survive.

He was sitting handcuffed to a chair in a corner suite in the Tops casino. Muted jazzy music filtered up from below. His bare feet rubbed into the carpet. He had dressed in civilian clothes to come here, suspenders over a clean shirt, and trousers too tight in the crotch.

"Have you been a good boy, Ron?" Martina asked him from somewhere across the room.

Picus licked his lip and smiled. “No,” he said.

He wasn't used to waiting. And he'd been waiting. What was she doing? Was she changing her clothes? Women took forever to change their clothing… only to take the clothing off again. He would never understand.

He sensed movement, heard a susurrus of soft material. He felt stockinged toes touch his knee. Sensed a change in pressure and movement, her standing closer to him. He could smell the perfume warmed by her body.

Now her foot rubbed along the inside of his thigh. He couldn't hold back a groan. He'd suffered half an erection since the rumbling of the monorail, worsened by anticipation when he checked into the casino. He'd had to stand there smirking as the Chairman goon patted him down for weaponry. Whoa there pally, looks like you’re packin’, but I’m just gonna take your word for it.

"Have you right where I want you," Martina purred. She loved to play little games like these. Her strange little games. Mercifully she sidled into his lap, her arms slithering over his shoulders.

He was too tense for games tonight and before she realized it, he had handcuffed her to the chair. He felt her jolt and start to clink the cuff once she figured it out.

"Oh Ron. How'd you learn to do that? Blindfolded?"

In the darkness of the blindfold it was easy to recollect the terrifying moments before the plunge into the waters of the Colorado, the smooth voice in his ear saying, Now, brother, the key is not to panic.

"Magic," he said.

He pushed up the blindfold with his freed hands. She had unstrung his business tie for that purpose. He still wore it as a headband when he leaned in to nuzzle and kiss her. He saw what she was wearing—thin gauzy panties and gartered stockings. Such useless, trifling items, but he had developed a taste for them, how they looked on a woman’s body.

Martina rubbed against him meltingly now and her free hand fell to the inner seam of his trousers, cupping and pressing. She kissed his groaning mouth and steadied herself when he jerked her forward by the hips, his thumbs pressing into her panties. When it became too much to bear, he took down the zipper and half-hugged, half-lifted her into penetration. He hadn’t even pulled her panties all the way off, just pulled the crotch up aside, and there was a lacy friction as he pushed into her and rocked.

Before Martina he’d hardly known anything about sex. He thought he did. It seemed straightforward enough to him, something that you took because you survived to take it. You were stronger than the others or you outsmarted them.

He’d never known a woman to enjoy it like Martina did, so freely, intensely, with a depth of affection he had never experienced.

It was all too much for him, she sensed that, and she adjusted her stance to ride him out hard. Her voice urged him on softly and lowly, and she strained to reach his face with her cuffed hand, stroking, petting him, and when he came, her thumb was pressing into his eyebrow, her mouth on his mouth, her heat pulling him in.

Picus lay gasping for a moment, coming back to his senses, coming back to the thought that she had watched his face throughout. He had noticed, oddly, that his emotions were always very important to her and she would often ask about them. She was touching his face tenderly now and their eyes met, hers dark and luminous.

Martina smiled gently. “You couldn’t have even waited to take them off properly, could you, baby?” she said. “I got a killer wedgie right now.”

“A what,” Picus said.

Martina laughed. “You know, a wedgie. God, Ron.. if I didn’t know you came from a Vault, I’d have thought a UFO dropped you off or something."

“Is that bad?”

“Let’s lay on the bed, baby.. I've got my spy biz to tell you.. “ She kissed his nose. “Oh and I got some good ones, but first—you’ve got something to take care of, I think.” 

He left her handcuffed to the chair.

"Hey lover," she said, "you're not going to leave me like this, are you?"

"Looks like it," Picus replied as he padded away barefoot on the carpet. Before the introduction of the blindfold, he had noticed a courtesy tray left on the credenza by the front door. "Did you order room service?"

"No, but Wally brought it by anyway."

A folded note. Flowers. A bottle of wine on ice. His fingers touched the paper note. "Who's Wally?" he asked, his mind already working on what was written.

DEAREST GUEST, PLEASE LET US KNOW IF THERE IS ANYTHING WE MAY DO TO PROVIDE YOU A PLEASANT  
EXPERIENCE AND  
INDIVIDUAL ATTENTION!

The other starting letters didn't mean anything, so far as the rules were concerned.

"Wally, guy with the bad ankle. You know.. " When he looked back over his shoulder, he found her smiling almost shyly from the chair, one knee on it. "The one who's a lil' sweet on me."

D-A-E-I, then? No, no E. You had to take the starting letters down in a column but only if they were our letters.

Picus crumpled the note in his hand and slipped it away in his trousers pocket. Experience. X. XI.

Martina grinned and gave the cuff another clink. "You're not jealous, are ya?"

"What if I was?"

He wasn't. No. Martina had slept with others at his direction. No matter how they treated women, the dissolute had a strange habit of confiding in them once the act was complete. Never mind they beat them, drugged them, left them to falter and die on their own... they would say anything to a woman afterward and Martina had much to report.

This was business, the good old 'biz' as she put it.

She was watching him now, grin vanished, and the look on her face was almost apprehensive. That was what it looked like to him, apprehension. He would have thought that she wanted him to be jealous of her liaisons with others. Keep him interested. But there was a shadow across her face and her posture balled up slightly, the way she kneeled one leg on the chair, both hands holding the back. She took her lower lip in, and her free hand wandered to her garter.

"I won't do it anymore if you don't want," she said softly then, and the confidence was out of her posture, as though she felt now what she looked like: a half-naked girl cuffed to a chair, exposed, unsure. "If you don't want me to, Ron."

He sensed that she feared for his approval, that she was frustrated sexually, that her mood could plummet if he wasn't careful. He hoped she wouldn't cry or something.

"The information you've brought me has saved a lot of lives, Martina." He maintained eye contact for a moment. She looked away, as the weak did when they locked eyes with the strong. Picus relented; there was no further reason to investigate the room service platter, no further reason to leave a girl waiting.

D-X-I. D, 500. X, 10. I, 1. DXI. Room 511, then.

Picus brought the tray to the bedside table. From it he took the spray of flowers and drew them across Martina's cheek. Her eyes closed at the sensation. Hm, so she would like this. He drew the little flowers in slow circles on her face. He didn't know what they were, some plants. He'd never been good at telling them apart, even when taught, even when evaluated. His instructor let him suffer poison for the better part of a day on a field survival test when he'd eaten the wrong thing. They were just plants to him.

Martina's hold on the chair relaxed and her silky little garment caught the light when she reached out a hand to him, wanting contact.

"I'm going to teach you something," he told her. "I hope you'll never have to use it."

Her eyes opened then with interest.

He tossed the flowers on the bed and then took her cuffed wrist in one hand. He felt the knock of her pulse. With his other hand he stroked fingers across her temple and then plucked a bobby pin from her hair.

"You should always keep these at hand," he said. "Watch how I bend it. This will the be the easiest way for you to escape handcuffs. Once you learn.. you'll be free in seconds."

The reassuring contact and the salacious tidbit of information was enough to bring back her mood. Martina said softly, "Oh, but I didn't see you pick the lock when you got out."

Picus had angled himself into the best position when she cuffed him. It had been all too easy to straighten out and withdraw from the cuff. "I was expecting it. You weren't. There are many ways to escape."

"They taught you all this, didn't they?" she asked in a husky whisper.

He supposed that her imagination had her thinking of something you'd see in the pulps or the holos. Truth be told he learned the tricks of the trade after an excruciating trial of torture and mayhem at the hands of various frumentarii. His most hated yet helpful instructor was a boyish tribal who looked like he was twelve years old or something. Picus still had dreams of being thrown handcuffed into the Colorado. 'Dear brother, you're just not getting this, are you? Don't worry, I pounded the water out of you.. I wouldn't let harm come to you! Lady Silva says you have a special mission, so we will train you especially. Now, let us get you to your feet and we will try again after a demonstration. Don't panic, you'll just suck in water.'

Picus placed the bent pin in her free hand and helped guide her. She leaned in at his closeness and rubbed her cheek on his shoulder, but he made her look at what they were doing.

"You should learn this so well that you don't need to look anymore. You should look straight ahead if you ever need to do this. You should practice. Where's the key?"

She smiled. "On a ribbon by my pillow."

For some reason the detail of a handcuff key on a girly ribbon made him smile. Very Martina.

While she fiddled with the cuff, he slipped a hand beneath the satin scrap of a garment. He ran a slow stroke across her outer thigh, dipping low to pluck at her garter. Sometimes she like to stash something in there to make herself feel sly. A knife, one time-- he'd told her flatly it looked like she had an erection. She didn't react well to that.

Martina was still struggling with the lock. He let her struggle. That was the best way to learn. How he learned.

While his protege learned her lesson, Picus began to kiss her cheek, her jaw, her neck. She responded warmly to him. He knew she liked him for the unique opportunities he provided her if nothing else. Letting her live her little fantasies. Letting her think she was an NCR captain's girlfriend. That kind of prestige and stability was a rare prize for a woman to attain.

He gripped and squeezed a handful of thigh flesh, where the leg broadens to meet the body. She moaned. His hand ran from the outside of her thigh to the inner, and he pressed his knuckles against the softer skin. Just barely brought his index finger up, just barely disturbing the hairs of her sex.

Martina gasped.

She shifted her stance completely and for a moment it looked like she would abandon her efforts with the handcuffs. Their eyes met sharply and then she smiled, pushing her body against his hand. 

While she picked at the lock, he played at her lips, teasing her, barely touching her. She felt wet and hot. Plump. With Martina the first time he had found it vaguely disgusting how slimy her body became, disgusting yet so arousing. Some time later he described his findings to another frumentarius, who explained it was a perfectly natural response of a female body in a state of arousal. Perfectly natural, and desirable.

In fact this helpful frumentarius had decided to give him some instruction on the matter, but Picus had reacted with distrust-- this happened to be the same instructor who had once drowned him in handcuffs, beat him, allowed him to eat toxic roots, allowed him to wallow about in hallucinogenic misery, chased him through the desert for a week, tortured him when captured, reduced him to tears on two different occasions, and then on one had placed a live cazador on his arm and told him not to sweat so much.. it would wash away the pheremone ointment. 'The ointment gives you a pleasing smell to her, and without it, she will sting you. They are all ladies, you know. You must learn how to treat a lady.. or fake it without giving offense.'

Fake it without giving offense.

Easy, with Martina. She was attractive and young. Her voice was not especially irritating like some of their voices were. She tended to chatter but she was not stupid. She was very giving sexually and enjoyed the act. After her, Picus realized he could not be with a woman who did not.

He used to hesitate to touch her down there. She had shown him how. She had to show him a lot of things.. but even if he didn't always learn quickly, he learned after practice. He learned that she liked to be touched at the beginning of her sex, near the top, either a dull rubbing with a grouping of fingers or the precise application of a fingertip to the little hooded nub. Sometimes it was too much. Sometimes she needed more. It was all contextual. Complicated. His instructor had some enthusiastic comments on the process but Picus had blushed fiercely and told him he was done talking about it-- and what are you, twelve! You're too young for this conversation.

He was rubbing her slowly now, bluntly, for the angle was difficult to get it how she liked it most. It was easier, more immediate, to tease her opening, and he did so, curving a finger down her seam and pushing inside. Her voice came strongly on a groan. She felt so wet, so needy. He half-wondered if his fingers would touch his own seed, but he no longer cared if they did.

He worked her slowly while she worked the lock. She was losing patience. He had closed his eyes while he toyed with her, but now he heard the frustrated rattle of the cuff. She couldn't get free just yet.

"Concentrate," he told her.

"I can't concentrate," she hissed back.

Encircling her with his free arm round the middle, he pressed his body against her and began to move his hips in time to the slow push of his fingers. "Learn," he murmured against the edge of her open mouth. "If you need to get free for real…you'll be distracted then as well."

Martina made a desperate sound. Not knowing how to read it entirely, he dragged the two fingers out of her and teased her inner thigh again. He didn't want it too much just yet. Of course he could, but he had learned that a woman's climax was a complicated and tricky thing. Even if she achieved one, you could ruin it, or it could still be bad or unsatisfying. What in the hell.. it was beyond his understanding.

He had attempted only one time to even broach the barest limits of the subject with his sister, and that was, in its widest metaphor, to ask if she was happy with her latest man. She had slowly turned her head like an owl to regard him and then responded she was content with her thread in the Great Tapestry. She told him she relied on no man, only the gods, and the living god their king and master, Caesar their dominus.

His sister was considered one of the most gifted of the priestesses. A gift of prophecy and portents.

Her six children were regarded as results of her duties to the People, offshoots of choiceless matings directed by the sibyl.

Picus never asked about her men again. He didn't want to think about it.

Martina finally prevailed. He knew she would. If she was feeling clever she could have taken him off guard when she was free, but instead she immediately flung herself against him, flush with success and arousal. "Oh Ron, I got it," she cried. "I can pick locks now!"

He hoisted her up. The satin absorbed her body heat and felt slippery in his grip. She had a lot of thigh, something he learned he liked in a woman, and the bed bounced when he tossed her down on it. She gazed up at him adoringly, excited with the thoughts of what he might do to her now. Then she realized he also brought the cuffs and she made a squeak of outrage when he cuffed both her wrists to the bed.

"But that's both hands, Ron," she cried.

He breathed warm air on the satin bunched at her belly. He turned his cheek flat against it, felt his hot breath held in by the material. The cuffs rattled when his hands fell away from her upper arms, the better to scoop underneath her hips.

"That's both hands," she protested, "how'm I supposed to get out of these now?"

"Oh, you won't be able to." He nosed the edge of the satin aside. Kissed her belly. His lips felt her skin go taut when she inhaled. The sound of the ceiling fan was a steady soft rhythm, and the strains of music were coming up jazzy and sensuous from below.

Ron was in no hurry to go anywhere-- Room 511 or no. The man that waited there could wait a little longer. Could entertain himself. This was Vegas, after all.

Martina's stockings clipped to her panties with delicate fasteners. Before he learned the trick of them, he had ripped a good pair with a run that ran thigh to ankle. Now he had patience and the understanding of how they worked.

Her panties were wet, plain to sight even in the soft moody glow of the bulb in the nightstand lampshade. Wet plain to touch. He brushed his thumb over her front and it brought a low sound out of her. He pinched the gauzy panties and pulled them up tight, rubbing her with the rasp of textured material. Her hips rolled toward him.

"Oh Ron," she sighed, "oh just do something.. please."

Martina made a shuddery squeak-gasp sound when he mouthed the front of her panties. She rubbed against him again, insistently, but he only slowly moved his lip and nose, breathing deep.

Then he drew down the scrap of material, leaning back on his knees to draw them down off her legs. With eager cooperation, Martina helped kick the panties off her heel, and she drew stockinged toes across his cheek. He took and held her ankle, looking down on her, her eyes dark and soft, tender and trusting. She was wrong to trust him.

"You're overdressed," she murmured as he nuzzled her foot. The toes were clenching up in delight. He pressed a kiss against the arch.

Picus stripped. Martina drew in her legs, knees together, and watched him. There was a flicker of something as she beheld him. The sight of his nude body always sparked second glances or sharp hisses in the showers. His body raised puffy scars where it healed from scourging, from whipping, from a dog's bite, from a fall on the obstacles, from bullets, from the edge of a machete swung by Ulpius. If the bad-tempered decanus had only reached a hair's breadth closer, Picus would not be here, safe and warm on the bed in the finest Vegas hotel, about to make love to a beautiful casino girl.

He left her stockings on. They had an interesting texture against his skin when he brought her legs up. She watched him with keen anticipation up until the moment his lower lip touched her lips, and the slightest flicker of his tongue sent her head against the headboard.

She said his name. That was his old name. Ron. They said to use his old name so he would respond to it naturally.

She kept saying it, gasping it as he washed her seam with his tongue. Lapped at the little bud she showed him. He learned she liked only slow changes in what he did to her, the speed or pressure, nothing jarring that would chase her off her way to climax. He felt her tense and then relax into it, letting her sink into it like a warm cushion of sensation.

Her voice became only the faintest sound, just her husky breathing, as she twisted slowly against his mouth. He introduced a finger and rubbed slowly into her body, felt her little muscles squeeze at him.

The handcuffs clinked on the rail as she began to squirm and jerk. Her foot kicked once and she moved again on the bed, still for a moment before she twisted round the other way. He pressed a slow kiss on her, then, looking up at her face, her glazed eyes, drinking in the way her mouth fell open. How her quick and shallow breathing moved her breasts beneath the satin. He could see their dark shape and darker nipples showing through the fabric. Wide dark nipples.

She was close, trying to tell him so. He wanted to watch her face but she needed him, and he returned to the rhythmic lapping and pressing of his tongue against her. His middle finger joined the index inside her and as her hips began to jerk and twitch against him, he felt the squeeze and suck of her inner muscles as her climax gripped her. He couldn't help make a sound as she pushed strongly now and cried out, twisting against him as if in pain. The cuffs clinked against the headboard as her entire body shifted and squirmed. She even managed to kick him somehow. Her voiceless cry sounded like all her breath had squeezed out of her.

The important thing was not to stop with this. They didn't finish like men, not all at once, and he tongued her into a whimpering, gasping release, relentless even as the little clenches grew weaker and weaker. Only until she found her voice, and her sobbing gasp begged him to stop, stop please, oh Ron, baby no more.

Her eyes, when he met them, were shiny and dark, completely open. She loved him. Of course she did. Without breaking the gaze, he took the edge of her satin garment and wiped his mouth and chin with it. He grinned at her, as if to say, what do you think about that.

Her eyes closed and she smiled. He reached across her body for the little ribboned key beneath the pillow. Freed her from the cuffs, and he rubbed her wrists before pulling her arms straight up for getting off her little satin nightie. He took her arm again and kissed one of those big nipples, then drew her into an embrace. They liked that. At least she did. After he had mated with other women in the camp, they had only hung their heads and meekly intoned the favor of Juno to grant them issue. Picus had fathered two males by this time but one of them died from a cough. He never knew them. They were only words from his sister.

Martina felt warm and slack in his arms. A pleasant weight. He would be ready to mate again soon. In the meantime, there was wine, and she was trying to reach across him to motion to the night stand.

They drank glasses of red California together in the bed. Martina chatted freely and caught him up on all the gossip, all the goings-on.

The blackout two nights ago. The Securitrons acting strange. Rumors of a plot out of Gomorrah. The Chairmen mulling what to do with the Ultra-Luxe after the disaster.

Martina said that the vault hotel was getting a lot of business these days. "I think it makes people feel safe, you know? Staying in a vault. 'course there's always talk of the Lucky 38 opening up, but nobody's gone in there in years."

She leaned her face against his chest, her cheek hot from a wine flush. "You ought to come visit me down in the vault," she murmured. "Sarah let me pick better hours for my shift. My room's real nice.. you've never seen it."

Picus never wanted to see the inside of a vault again.

"It'll make you feel at home," Martina whispered.

It seemed a lifetime ago, their vault, the scratchy jumpsuits, the trays of thin gray gruel. Empty corridors. The buzz of lights. The whirring of the robots who were supposed to help them. Patty sitting at the diner booth swinging her feet...

He didn't reply, but she read into his silence. She always did. She was asking now, for some reason, "Do you have other girls, Ron?" and she asked it in a very light voice, very deliberate, even though she slurred.

He was thinking of Patty at the diner booth, kicking her feet. 'Go change the song on the jukebox, Ron, go change it for me, I hate this song.' It's not on, Patty. 'I hate this song, Ron.' The jukebox was broken for months. 'You don't hear it, Ron? You don't hear them?' 

"Ron."

Martina touched his arm.

"No," he said, but she didn't believe him, not by the look on her face.

"It's all right, Ron," she said softly. It wasn't. She wanted to be his girl.

Picus hugged her once. "I'm not very good with women." She must have agreed because this made her smile a little. He added, "I love you," and her smile flashed away. She pressed back strongly against him, her face intense. They kissed.

It was nice having Martina. She was convenient. She dealt tables in the 21, had good access to the vault and its owner. She was sociable, beautiful, easy to approach. She wasn't on chems. She didn't owe anyone money. She was a good source of information. Her companionship was an unexpected bonus.

He filled her another glass. She was getting sleepy, her movement slow and heavy. He felt her warm weight against his thigh, hip, chest. He put away his glass to free both hands for stroking her neck, her body.

Martina did strange and complicated things to her hair to make it straight. She was self-conscious about it and what he thought of it. He didn't have an opinion. It was hair. He petted and stroked it now and she turned her face blissfully toward him for kisses.

His hand fell lower to rub across her belly, her mound. He wanted to make her ready again. She opened easily to him and lolled back on the bed. One of her hands remained on his face.

When he shifted his weight over her, his knee nudging her thigh, Martina made a soft cry of anticipation. She parted herself for him and their joining made him groan, a shallow push to start, and then a deeper slide as he settled in. 

Her hands wandered his back. She hugged him. Near breathless, her voice told him lowly that she loved him, she loved him, as they moved together on soft sheets, a clean bed, no one watching. He slipped out of her at one point, still thrusting before he became aware that it had happened. He opened his eyes and found her smiling at him. Her hand touched him and held him against her body, almost protectively, before she helped him in.

Their pace quickened. He felt her excitement, her body squeezing against him. The pressure of her fingertips on his back, his buttocks now.

They don't often come off together. So much better. His world was suddenly nothing but ecstacy, her hot body, the cool sheets, and the ceiling fan moving air over them. A deep satisfaction set in, and a bone-deep exhaustion.

Picus closed his eyes and drew out of her, hugging her loosely. Arms always got in the way. He felt his body sink into the bed and told himself he was waiting. She was nosing him, giving little kisses.

Martina fell asleep eventually with their fingers interlocked.

Picus left her there, pulling the sheet up, unbunching it, and letting it loft down over her body. He rubbed his hands over his face as he collected his clothing from the floor and walked with it into the adjoining room taken out in a fake name.

Sometimes he left like this. She never questioned. Her imagination filled in all the blanks for him. He went to the sink basin and washed his hands, his face, and ran water over a towel for a quick rubdown. He dressed himself in what he wore earlier, patting down the pocket to find the crumpled note again.

Picus straightened his tie, combed his hair, and turned off the light as he walked back to the bed in his own room. He took his briefcase and spread it open on the undisturbed covers. A few clothing items. A lint brush. Cigars. A flask that would look like it contained an alcoholic drink, and the paisley kerchief that wrapped it. At first glance the briefcase appeared to contain only these things.

For some reason he went to the open door between their rooms and looked in on her again. Fast asleep.

It was going to be difficult to kill her some day.


End file.
